Serving Home Educators Since 1988

The Gordon Family: Our youngest, Merina, with Beverly while John is sitting.

We’d like you to have the
opportunity to know us, the Gordon family, better. We began selling
educational materials in 1988 shortly after we began our home
schooling journey. At that time, we operated as Family Education
Resources out of the garage of our Tacoma, Wash. home. From the
beginning our goal was to help home schooling families be good
stewards of their budgets while providing them excellent resources.
The entire family was involved in sorting, inventorying and selling
the used textbooks and library books we bought from public and
Christian school surplus sales.

In 1990, we moved to a place that included a
huge warehouse and retail space in Tukwila. This move gave us
plenty of space for the over 10,000 used books we now had for sale.
Having a retail space, separate from our home but on the same
property was really a blessing. We gradually added new and consigned
books specifically for home schoolers to our offerings. Beverly began
offering homes school supervising, achievement testing, and home
school classes and workshops in the classroom space in our shop.

As Home Schoolers, We Understand Your Needs

To enhance our home schooling, we began traveling around the
Northwest. To pay for these adventures, we would bring a sampling of
our books that we would set up to sell in churches, grange halls, and
hotel meeting rooms. When Beverly found herself answering the same
questions repeatedly, she began doing talks to families who came to
purchase books. It was not long before more people came to hear her
talks, than came to buy our books. Fortunately, we did continue to
sell enough books to support this ministry.

Our oldest daughter, Amelia (a.k.a. Amy),
graduated from home schooling in June 1992. After graduating she
attended culinary arts school. She is now a busy mother of three
active boys (13, 10, and 5) and one little princess (3 years). Amy
gets plenty of opportunity to use her culinary training with her
little brood.

Angie, our next in
line, attended community college through an early entrance program
her last two years of her schooling, graduating in 1994. She later
attended police academy. Angie married Sam Cavanaugh, now a U.S. Navy
Chief, in November 1996. They have a daughter, Caitlynn.

Spelling Power Launches Us Into Publishing Business

As our two oldest children became
more and more independent, Beverly found she had more free time
than she’d enjoyed in 20 years. This gave her time to finally sit
down and document the research and methods she used to solve our
Angie’s spelling problems. Spelling Power was published in the
early Spring of 1994. Since then we have published a variety of
different educational titles. We specialize in educational books and
resources that are well-researched and are consistent with the
philosophy of multi-aged, multi-sensory, multi- learning- style, and
individualized educational materials.

Just before the first edition of Spelling Power
rolled off the presses our youngest, Merina, came to live with
us. Two weeks after exhibiting Spelling Power for the first time,
Merina crawled across the room. Well, so much for hours and
hours of uninterrupted writing! Merina is now 16 years old and
"doing" High School at home. She has grown up an active
participant in our business.

We Open Castlemoyle Books & Buster House Tea Room in Pomeroy

Beverly's parents: Bruce and Elsie, in front of the fireplace at Castlemoyle Books. Beverly's dad passed away in May of 2008.

The growth of our business and Beverly’s
health sent us looking for a larger place with a dryer climate than
Seattle offered. We found the perfect place in October, 1998, when we
happened upon Pomeroy, Wash., and the historic Hotel Revere. Pomeroy
is a little town (pop. 1,500) in the S.E. corner of Washington State.
Farming and tourism are its claim to fame. The Lewis and Clark Trail
follows U.S. Hwy. 12 which is also Main Street.

Built in 1886, the hotel is on the National
Historic Register and once offered 45 guest rooms with the main floor
devoted to retail and office space. Having been vacant since 1978,
the hotel needed a lot of work. Beverly’s parents moved to Pomeroy
along with us to help with the renovations. So far, we have renovated
the main floor lobby into a bookstore. We have also completed a tea
room, our offices, and warehouse space. We proudly re-opened the
store and tearoom in 2006. The 45 hotel rooms have become our home.
The upper floors include our home, a "mother-in-law suite"
for mom and guest suites. Progress on the hotel is slow since we work
on it and live debt-free. We hope to someday offer hospitality to
home school families that visit our scenic area.

Today, nearly 24 years since our adventure
began, we are still a family run business and actively home
educating. We find the opportunity of sharing devotions, meals and
work as a multi-generational family to be a very rewarding lifestyle.
We also still feel the call to serve the needs of home and classroom
educators. We sincerely hope you will give us the opportunity to
serve you and your family too!